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Name: Arun Majumdar Title: Director, Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy [More]

Until now, patients who suffer from one of the most common causes of vision loss have had little hope for treatment.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists in China and the US have modified a common thermoelectric material to vastly improve its thermoelectric properties. The development could lead to new devices capable of converting waste heat into useful amounts of electricity.

The May 3 death of a Marsican brown bear ( Ursus arctos marsicanus ) has put the world's rarest bear subspecies one step closer to extinction. Just 50 or so of the animals remain in two of Italy's national parks, a population so small that the bears are "below the threshold of survival," Giuseppe Rossi, head of the National Park of Abruzzo, Lazio, and Molise, told The Christian Science Monitor

The people of the world get 75 percent of their sustenance--either directly, or indirectly as meat--from four crops: maize (corn), wheat, rice and soybeans. The world's rising population--now predicted by the United Nations to reach 10.1 billion by century's end --has been fed thanks to rising yields of all four of these crops during the past century.

The people we associate with can have a powerful effect on our behavior --for better or for worse. This holds true for human health and body mass, too. The heavier our close friends and family, the heavier we are likely to be

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - After a series of high-profile natural gas drilling spills, the Energy Department named a panel to recommend ways to improve the safety of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a technique that has expanded the country's potential to extract the fuel.

Paleoanthropology is a discipline known as much for its feuds as for its findings. Among the best known of these clashes is a longstanding one between two of the field's most famous scientists, Donald Johanson and Richard Leakey

University of Oregon researcher Richard Taylor is on a quest to grow flowers that will help people who've lost their sight, such as those suffering from macular degeneration, to see again.

By Jeff Tollefson of Nature magazine Given the current political climate, it did not come as much of a surprise when the chief executive of one of the largest utility companies in the United States addressed the tenth annual Conference on Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, this week with a talk questioning the viability of carbon-storage ventures in the next few years. Michael Morris, chief executive of American Electric Power (AEP), headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, said that the energy industry needs a signal from politicians in Washington DC.

* Rainiest April on record hits coffee trees * Damage to roads will complicate exports [More]

Some things are best done after dark. Setting off fireworks. Telling scary stories

On top of the usual "spills in aisle five," grocery stores have another mess they're hoping to clean up: greenhouse gas leaks. U.S. EPA announced yesterday that its partnership to cut greenhouse gas emissions from grocery stores has reached 50 states.

(PhysOrg.com) -- By using one light pulse to control another, researchers have proposed a design for an optical transistor that fulfills the most challenging criteria set forth in a study last year. An optical transistor has long been sought by physicists because it could be used for optical computing, in which photons rather than electrons are used to perform digital computations.

Portuguese physicists report that they have identified the unknown force whose influence on outward bound interplanetary space probes has puzzled scientists since 1998.